When you get a new ham bone

you have to contemplate it, study it, plan your attack--and, of course, protect it. 

Click an image to see a larger version.

When you're ready, you pounce.

Once you have it securely under control, you move your head so quickly that no camera can captuer your motion perfectly. 

Victory over the ham bone is now yours. 

Alas, victory is tiring, and so you yawn.

At this point, what else can do you but gaze soulfully into your human's eyes and implore him...

...yes, almost command him...

...to give you another new bone.

And so it begins again.

PT's studio team FTW

I don't normally post here videos we at PT do for clients, but I'm making an exception with the following one about tablets.



The reason is that tonight AdFed, the Triangle Advertising Foundation, honored PT's studio team at the annual American Advertising Awards with a Gold award for this video.  As you can see in this program book image

Click the image to see a larger version.

our award happened to fall right after the title page for the section; very nice.

I have long said and always meant that I am exceptionally proud and lucky to be able to work with the best team in the world.  This is just one more proof of that statement. 

The top 5 snow and ice driving tips Raleigh motorists can't learn

I was able to get out of my driveway and neighborhood today and finally reach the office.  In the course of driving there and heading home, I recalled why I wish I could spend every snow and ice day hiding in my house, as far from local motorists as I can get.  From these trips, I have discovered that people here simply cannot learn these basic lessons:

5.  The fact that you drive an SUV does not mean that the dealer downloaded into your brain Matrix-style the skills for handling snow and ice.

4.  Tailgating someone is never a good idea, but it's a particularly bad one on an icy stretch of road. 

3.  What those yellow signs with the squiggly lines on them mean. 

2.  Those signs that tell you certain sections of road will freeze first are not lying. 

and the lesson they most seem unable to grasp is

1.  That shiny black stuff that looks like water but doesn't ripple is, no fooling, ice. 

Watch Bill talk about his cool blog!

Learn ways to reduce operating expenses!

Study up on Chromebooks!

Yes, you can do all of this--and more--by watching the latest episode of Now with PT.



Enjoy!

My favorite romantic weather movie scene

The crappy weather outside--I'm basically iced in--made me think about weather, which led me to weather-related movies, which took me to movie scenes involving weather, which finally landed me on my favorite romantic weather scene:  the bit near the end of L.A. Story in which Steve Martin's weatherman character watches as the magic he wished for happens and Victoria Tennant returns to him.

I couldn't find the scene itself on YouTube, but this Enya music video includes most of it.



"A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true."

Finally, a movie that's all fun: Kingsman: The Secret Service

I've bashed a couple of movies recently, and I gave faint praise to one I found to be at least visually entertaining, so I'm particularly happy to be able to say that if you want two hours and nine minutes of cinema fun, you should go see Kingsman. 

The trailer tells the two plots that ultimately converge:  our hero, a British secret agent (Colin Firth), gives a young man (Taron Egerton) a chance to join the service, even as a clearly deranged bad guy (Samuel L. Jackson) plots to kill off much of humanity.  Firth plays the cooler-than-Bond hero with chill British perfection, while Jackson chews the scenery with abandon.  Egerton turns in a serviceable performance.  Michael Caine, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, and Sophie Cookson all deliver strong, memorable characters.  The acting is perfect for this romp. 

The plots are, of course, pretty much the standard spy fare that you'd expect, to the point that at times Jackson mocks the plot as being from a cliched movie.  That said, there are a few surprises, including one big one, that I didn't see coming.  (I refuse to spoil it for you.)

I could pick a lot of holes in the movie, but they end up not mattering, because most of all it's clear that everyone and everything in this movie is about having fun.  I could watch it again today.

If you want to have a good time with an over-the-top spy film, don't miss Kingsman. 

Jupiter Ascending

While I'm on a bad movie roll, I might as well talk about one that I actually quite enjoyed, Jupiter Ascending.  Though it is definitely a hot mess of a film, this big silly space opera worked for me, so it's an interesting contrast to the other two bad flicks (Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight) that I've discussed recently. 

The structure of Jupiter Ascending is a silly plot with so many flaws you'll either have to ignore them or spend all your time pointing them out.  The heroine has power over bees because, hey, why not?  She uses the power only once, of course, because it happens to be convenient.  The daughter of the local sheriff appears, runs out for groceries, and never appears again.  Whatever.  I could go on and on.  You don't go to this one for story.

The acting is also not the reason to see it.  The two leads, Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, are cardboard stand-ups, generic inserts in the hunky male and lips-and-eyes young actress categories respectively.  The villains are more amusing, if only because they go so far over the top as to almost take flight.  Particularly memorable is Eddie Redmayne, who manages in one twelve month period to deliver both an Oscar-nominated performance (The Theory of Everything) and this appalling exercise in awfulness, in which he lisps and staggers and swishes his way to the most excessive performance of the young 2015.

The reason to see this movie--and what elevates it above its bad-movie kin--is its look, the unusual vision of the Wachowskis.  Spaceships with the strange grandeur of Victorian clockworks, floating cities of similar construction, space docks with giant chandeliers--the look of the movie will carry you through it and keep you interested--well, it kept me interested.

As long as you understand that you're in this one for the visuals, I recommend Jupiter Ascending.  If you want a genuinely good movie, however, give it a pass.